Back in business!

After seven months in a tent, travelling around our beautiful country in a rather eclectic fashion, I am back in a house with real walls and running water, and many other such luxuries. In South Australia! Barely, anyway-we’re in Mount Gambier for a while.

In two weeks or so I will have my belongings back too (couches! a real bed!), and will be able to get back into sewing. It’s the thing i’ve most missed, and i’ve already laid down the law-if we go travelling again, my sewing machine is coming with us. The husband says he’ll gladly take it along, if only so he doesn’t have to listen to my whingeing.

Of course, this means Pepper Place will now be open for business again, after our nearly nine month break. I’ll be sending out a newsletter soon detailing pre-orders and the details of my very first local market appearance-sign up on the sidebar if you haven’t already.

Update-Where am I?!

  My apologies for not updating this blog-very naughty of me, being a business blog and all.

I am currently not trading-mainly, because I don't have my stuff! We packed up our house two months ago, ready for a trip interstate to visit family, planning to head back up to Queensland and move back onto our acreage. Then it sold. Which is absolutely awesome, as it had been on the market for over a year, but it's thrown our plans out completely!

  As we had no idea where to move to, we've decided to grab this opportunity and do some travelling-us and five kids under 8 in a tent, should be bliss! Right now we've got no idea where we're going, where we're going to end up or how long we're going to be. Kind of scary, but really exciting.

  So for now, I am most definitely on holiday, and i'll let you all know when I make it back-wherever I make it 'back' to!

xxKelly.

Busyness.

   I realised the other day it has been over a month since I posted here. That’s somewhat intentional, for the last few months i’ve been sewing as much as I can, and blogging about it has taken second place to actually doing it. And as I keep packaging up and posting off orders triumphantly, and completely forgetting to photograph them to prove that something is actually happening in my workspace, here is my busy room.  Two orders waiting for topstitching and labels.

The neglected scraps pile-sorting and tidying has also taken second place to working.

The fantastic cupboard, my pride and joy-this used to be my shelf for outer fabrics. Note there are none anymore-all of this is cut, reinforced and snapped, and the bottom halves of the piles just need elastic and topstitching. Hundreds of nappies, all at least half done, yay for us! I still have a few metres of random fleeces and minkys, but virtually everything is on it’s way to being something rather than sitting gathering dust.

The last of the order rack-this had eight bags on it last week. Now that was a juggling act, and I did drop a few balls in the organisational sense. Nothing major, but phew, i’m glad it’s manageable again!

Girl-ing up the stash

   A previous customer had hedged her bets, buying a unisex stash until she had her baby. Now the little girl is here it was time to add some pink. There’s another 6 Easyflats, two pockets, three covers, five wipes and six shaped boosters.

  My seven year old daughter also solved a small problem i’ve always had with packaging-namely, that I find it incredibly silly and refuse to buy packaging for my products as I believe it just creates more waste (not to mention upping the price for customers). What could be sillier around a cloth nappy?!?! However, my daughter came up with the idea of tying up items like wipes, and the shaped boosters below, with strips cut from my scrap fabric. Now that I can do, happily. I used to just tuck smaller items inside a pocket or cover to stop them sloshing around in the Postpaks, but this is much nicer. Thanks daughter!

Silk Liners

 

Raw silk is a wonderful, natural way to keep your baby’s skin healthy. The natural wax left by the silkworms, sericin, aids in the healing of nappy rash without lotions or ointments. They can be used as a treatment or full-time as a preventative measure, and are especially useful for babies suffering skin conditions such as eczema. Simply lay into your baby’s nappy, ensuring contact with any sore skin.

  To care for your raw silk liners, handwash or pop into a lingerie bag on a gentle machine cycle, and air dry.

  Pepper raw silk liners measure 30x8 cms, with overlocked edges, and are $3.00 each.

Another wee one all set up

  No pun intended, honestly!

30 Easyflats, 7 OSFM covers, and 2 raw silk liners. And my cutting table really is spotlessly clean-just very well used.

As well as doing the orders that come in i’ve been stocking up my boxes, obsessively clearing my cupboards of fabrics and stacking up lots of finished product. This means I can do any size market at the drop of a hat, and it turns orders like this from a big job to a small one-I already had four of these covers and 16 Easyflats all completed. This has made such a difference in stress levels-now it’s ‘what stress?!’

  More order pics are coming, i’ve been too busy manically sewing to keep up with the housekeeping.

Pepper Covers

Pepper Covers are a one-size nappy cover. 10 pairs of snaps across the waist give you maximum adjustability, and the three-level rise enables you to set the perfect length and leg fit for your child. The top row of snaps is close to the top, enabling it to sit snugly against your child’s skin, preventing leaks. The crotch is wide enough to fit  over a traditional terry flat nappy, but the fabrics are trim enough to give a slim fit over even the smallest modern cloth nappy. The leg elastic is internally cased, to allow for a soft, snug fit without red lines and irritation.

 Measurements

Waist-32-62cm

Rise 32-37-42cm

Crotch width-13cm

OSFM, Approximately 3.5-17kgs

Outers are predominantly polyester PUL (no wicking there) or a hidden layer of PUL with an outer of a polyester fabric such as minky, fleece or faux fur. Inners are suedecloth, for its trimness and stay-dry feel. Snaps are hidden and reinforced, for comfort and strength.

As always, only the best quality fabrics and notions have been used. Your PUL will remain waterproof, the threads won't fray and snap, your suedecloth won't pill. The leg elastic is enclosed in an internal casing for a neat look which is also long lasting. After all, the last thing you want is a nappy that was intended to last years wear out after months.

As with all Pepper products they are handmade in Queensland.

Want to order some, or find out more? Contact me here.

More?!

  And with the awesome generosity of her friends, we were able to add these to this order

To bring the total up to nine OSFM pockets with trifold inserts. Cool present, huh?

They should have been opened by now today-I hope she adores them and gets many hundreds of uses from them.

Can I really use cloth full-time?

  Many people do not believe that you can only use cloth, and skip the disposables completely. How do we forget so quickly? Only a few short decades ago mums had no other choice, and all babies were exclusively cloth-bummed. You probably never wore a disposable! Even when there was only terry or flannelette squares with pins, with wool covers or no cover at all, washing in a twin-tub or a copper and line drying. Think how much easier we have it today! With the arrival of snaps, Velcro, PUL, minky, bamboo and hemp, as well as automatic washing machines, using exclusively modern cloth is ridiculously easy. The Australian Nappy Network estimates using cloth takes about 10 minutes of extra work per day. That’s pretty minimal, considering the money you save-no doubt it will be the best-paid ten minutes of your day, as a penny saved is a penny earned.

Giant newborn night-time bum! Boosted terry flat under a fleece cover on a two week old

  My last child was exclusively cloth nappied-he is now 27 months and dry by day, wearing a nappy at night. Honestly, it was not particularly hard, and we lived on a property with a limited solar setup (no mains power), tank/dam water and a twin tub for 17 months of his life-with another three kids in cloth night nappies. But along the way I learnt quite a few tips to make the journey easier.

1. Have sufficient nappies-It will rain on washing day, they will get gastro and soil everything you own in an afternoon, you will be sick/tired/busy and not do the washing when you should. That is life. And that is when those extras you bought will be a lifesaver. Nothing fancy is required-a few packets of terry flats are cheap and dry quickly, and if they’re only back-up you won’t get sick of folding (try the Jo fold). Or buy more modern cloth if you have the $$$$, and know that a lower rotation means you’ve a better chance of reselling them at the end.

2. Buy a versatile stash- A whole pile of AIOs is great for ease, but not so great for changing circumstances. A bit of everything helps-that way if your child, for example, goes through a heavy wetting stage you have the extra boosters to cover it. Likewise, with lots of bits and pieces you can throw together a night nappy, even when they’ve decided to poo in their regular night nappy ten minutes after bedtime.

Looking much trimmer-a more typical size day nappy on a 10 month old

3. Have easy nappies-Wool makes a great cover, but hand-washing wool requires commitment. Sticking to items that have minimal pieces and assembly, are machine washable and quick to dry, means you’re less likely to drop them when times get busy.

4. Ignore the naysayers-Lots of people will tell you you can’t do it. I’m not sure why, except that maybe they didn’t want to and prefer to write off lack of effort to an impossible task. Being threatened by your cloth nappy use does seem to be quite common, unfortunately. I firmly believe that you’re doing the right thing for you child and the environment by using cloth, and you must too to be considering it-so don’t pay any attention to the negative folk.

And the last one…………

5. Don’t buy disposables!  If they’re not in your cupboard, you can’t use them. But with all of your preparation, you won’t need them.

You remember my sewing room?

And how lovely and organised and shiny it was?

This, sadly, is closer to what it usually looks like. This is a bit extreme, being the night before my twins’ sixth birthday, after days of frantic creating by everyone else in the family. We do handmade presents, and this is the result. After the presents have been packed away.

I know, I know, you can still see the floor so it’s not THAT bad-but it’s about as bad as I can handle it getting. Mostly it’s the stacking of stuff over every available surface-when I can’t see the sewing machine when i’m sitting in front of it, my brain implodes, and the kids nod and say to each other ‘Mummy is frothing at the mouth again’ while I throw all of their stuff into a pile and tell them that what isn’t gone in five minutes is going in the bin.

Deep breaths!